Friday Flashback

To continue the story of last week where I met my baby boy, here is my journal posting for the day I officially became his mommy:

November 4, 2004: Wow! What a day! Our court date was set for 9 a.m. The other family went first, and I followed at 9:30 a.m. By 10 a.m., I was a mom. The judge asked why I was adopting, why from Russia, how I would care for Henry. The prosecutor asked if it was okay that Henry was older than I originally asked for. She smiled when I commented how special it was that we shared our birthday. Then, out of the room and back in to hear that my petition was granted but that the 10-day wait would not be waived.

Next, it was off to the store to buy cakes for the caretakers and then on to the baby home. Henry was brought to me in a pink snowsuit. This was removed and he was dressed in a blue overalls outfit from Aunt Leslie. Then bundled in his blue snowsuit. Henry cried some in the car, mostly because the other little girl was crying. But he calmed quickly and fell asleep. That should be his only nap.


When we returned to the room, we played with his toys. Surprisingly, he took his first steps. He also seems to want to talk. He seemed to say "uh-oh" and would grunt twice in imitation of woof-woof. He enjoyed playing peek-a-boo. It was apparent that he was not used to one on one attention, but he sure loved it.

He went down at about 8:30 and slept until 6:30 a.m. He woke briefly at about 10:30 but it seemed he had a tummy ache. After a few minutes of consoling him, he settled right back down. He ate well and loved his bedtime bottle.

Yep, I know, not the same warm and fuzzies from the last post. But at this point, I was stressed to the max. I'm glad I got even this little bit documented. I was a new mom to a 15 month old baby and had no idea what I was doing. So far, it seems that I haven't damaged him much. I was so grateful that my Mom was along to provide assistance and moral support.

Now Taking Orders

It's a little late in coming, but I finally have the electronic copies of Henry's 5 year pictures. They were taken again by the wonderful Ivan at Bella Vista. I feel like he really has a knack for catching Henry's personality. I'm absolutely thrilled with the package I get from him, especially because it includes a CD with all of the images.

I am including several of my favorite shots. I would be more than happy to print and distribute for anyone who wants one. Either post a comment with the information of the shot(s) and size(s) you want, or drop me an email with the information. If interested, I can even send the you the digital file.

Photobucket Album

A running history of August 6

Okay, I don't have pictures from every August 6, but pretty close. Here is the very first picture of received of Henry. It was taken the day after he turned 1 year old:










This picture was taken the day Henry turned 2. We had gone to the circus the day before and this hat came with his cotton candy. I'm not sure why he has such a serious expression, but this is one of my all-time favorite pictures of him.






This picture was actually taken a day after Henry's third birthday. We spent his birthday at Allegra's baby shower and I have a fabulous picture of him on that day, but its not electronic. This photo was taken of him on the airplane on our way home from Philadelphia. He still loves to travel by plane.





This is one of the "official" 4-year-old pictures. I arranged a "shoot" with a professional photographer. He did an excellent job capturing Henry's personality and I treasure this collection of pictures so much. Wanna know what book he is reading? Well, Curious George, of course!











Here is Henry from today telling the world that he is 5!

Welcome aboard....

Welcome!

I've been wanting to do this for a while so I decided that today was the day...the day my baby turns 5. I wish I could backfill the last five years of Henry's story, but if I waited until that happened, then I'd be stuck and never able to go forward. So instead, as things occur to me, I'll try to include the history as I go.

So last night, we made a big deal about the fact that Henry would turn 5 today, August 6. This is the first year that he seems to really have a concept of that. So what does he want to know? "When Mama? When will I turn 5?" It was enough to send me to my stash of official papers. Unfortunately, nothing in them indicates the exact time he was born. To answer his curiosity, I simply told him that it would happen to him while he slept.

This morning, after he came and crawled into bed with me, I asked him how it felt to be 5. His answer: "I still feel like Henry. And I didn't get any bigger."

Oh, and as far as the blog's name "and always very curious", some of you might recognize that as a line from Curious George. It is usually on the first page of all of the stories, and is the tagline to describe him: "George was a good little monkey, and always very curious." Of course, his curiosity always get him into a pickle, but he always comes out on top. Curious George has been the favorite of my little monkey for as long as I can remember. So I thought it an appropriate name for the chronicles of Henry.

Weekend Recap

Monday, August 6, 2007
You are 4 – we are going to Chuck E Cheese tonight. That is what you picked. You did not get to go to Jacks – he was very sick and running a fever. So on Friday night we ate at Potbellys and went to a comets game and you caught a t-shirt for a new Football team. You love getting these t-shirts and you ended up wearing it to bed. Saturday, you, me, your mom, Aunt Nada and Jane Red went for dinner at Correllis. You had to have cannoli because Curious George had some in a show you watched. You liked it OK. Then on Sunday we went and you and mom had pictures taken at Oyster Creek park and in front of the City Hall in Sugar Land. You rode your bike with the training wheels and really for the first time you seemed to get the concept of pedaling. You are really proud of yourself for figuring it out. I am proud of you also. On Saturday, we took a nap together – you like to “spend the night” with someone and on the weekends we will let you every now and then. You are fascinated by the brands of cars right now and want to know what all the logos mean. You are so funny you can identify a Ford, a Toyota (that is actually what started it – the Comets play at Toyota center and you started recognizing the logo – it was really amazing because we never talked about it; you just recognized it), Lexus, Honda, Chrysler. We are trying to teach you Mitsubishi but it is hard for you to say. So last night you saw one and you told your Mom – lets talk about that one later. You are 39.5 inches tall and weigh 33.5 pounds.

We have a baby for you...

Since I am writing this retrospectively, it will be in past tense. However, for chronological reading of the blog, I am having it post against the day the events actually occurred, August 9, 2004. Ever since that day, my life has never been the same.

And to really understand my mind set on that August day, I need to step back even a few more days. Lets start with August 5. It was a Thursday, the day that I had my regular calls with my adoption agency. I was in the "waiting" stage where there was nothing further that I could do and waiting is not something I do very well. So as I spoke with Bridgette at EAC, I just kind of dropped a comment about the fact that I had a major milestone facing me the next day: my 40th b-day. Even though I don't celebrate my birthday, it was still a huge milestone and I thought it would be great to mark that milestone with a referral.

Bridgette laughed at me and encouraged me to be patient. She indicated that I really hadn't been waiting long (only since Memorial Day weekend, so about 2 months) and that they were telling folks that it was leaning more towards a 4 month wait for the referrals to come in.

Friday came along and Leslie and I had tickets to see Prince. We were in pretty much the last row of the upper deck of Toyota Center, but you can hear just as well from there. I did spend a lot of time that day thinking that it was the last birthday I would spend as a family of 1. The rest of the weekend was a blur.

But come Monday morning, August 9, I was due to go on a business trip to our office in Chicago. I was planning on being up there for the week, and my very generous co-workers had coordinated to have a shower for me while I was there. I dreaded the conversations that I knew would occur: "Have you heard anything yet?", "Any idea how much longer?" and the like.

I boarded the plane and promptly fell asleep, even before the plane took off. About half way to Chicago, I bolted awake. I don't believe in premonitions or the such, but I can tell you that at that moment, I KNEW I was going to get a call with my referral that day. After a few moments, I began seriously chastising myself for allowing myself to even contemplate this. Afterall, just four days earlier I had been lead to believe that it would be about 2 more months before that would happen. The rest of the flight passed without event.

The office is about 20 minutes away from the airport. I believe I stopped and picked up some lunch and was just settling in at my desk when my cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and realized that EAC was trying to contact me. I grabbed my cell phone and ran outside to answer it. Sure enough, it was the Referral Department at EAC. She informed me that they had a referral and at first she said it was a girl...I about fell over. I hadn't specified a gender, but based on the way that Russian Adoption works, I fully expected to receive a referral of a baby boy. She quickly corrected herself and told me that is was a boy. She rattled off a bunch of information to me.

She was very cagey about the age, just saying that he was a little older than a year. At this news, my heart sank. I really was hoping to get the referral of an infant, not a toddler. But I tried to keep an open mind and as she went on, I realized she was building up to something. Turns out, guess what? He turned 1 year old on the exact date that I turned 40. That kind of changed everything for me, my heart began to melt. She promised to email me a photo and fedex a video and file.

Here is the picture I received:It was like looking at a baby picture of my nephews. And those eyes, how could I not fall in love. Now all the research I had done told me not to get attached to the referral and not to fall in love with a photo. And I tried, I really did.

Of course, I had to call Leslie immediately and forward the photo to her with the promise under threat of death that she would tell NO ONE.

I had always felt that when I got my referral, I wasn't going to tell anyone until I had accepted. But now, here I am in Chicago with all of my family. Could all of this really be happening all around me and I not tell them? I didn't have it in me. As soon as I got to my parents that night, and everyone came for dinner, I spilled the beans. Check a coming post dated August 10 or August 11 with highlights of how the rest of the week panned out.